


Idol of Chaos

by Gyptian



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alien Lives Matter, Asexual Character, Awesome Villain Reprisal, Because Infinity War, Because Mindscapes, Because Scarlet Witch, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Character Study, Consequences, F/M, Friday Does What She Wants, Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Human Lives Matter, Infinity Stones, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Loki & Tony Stark Friendship, Loki (Marvel) Does What He Wants, Loki Does What She Wants, Marvel Needs More Hella, Metaphysical Shenanigans, Mindscapes, Multi, Past Mind Control, Pepper Potts Has A Tony, Poly Pepperony, Polyamory, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Regular Lives Matter, Regular People Can Be Heroes, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sentient AI, Spirit World, Stark AI, Tony Stark Has A Heart, aftermath of death, meddlesome gods
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-30 00:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16754206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyptian/pseuds/Gyptian
Summary: Loki spent years running from Thanos, only to be caught. Tony spent years learning how to defend against Thanos, only to be defeated. Pepper spent years trying to soothe Tony's fears, only to see them come true. Thanos spent decades on his crusade and succeeded.But that's only the first half of the story, because none of them ever learned how to stop fighting.





	1. Mind Over Matter

_1\. I am a sentient being; I have a right to live and grow. This law must be discovered for the others to take effect._

\- Stark's seven laws for sentient beings, penned by Anthony Edward Stark, age 9 7/12.

 

**Prologue**

After the end, Death appeared before Thanos, backlit by the sun rising over New Titan, population of one. The aroma of death wafting from her curves silenced even the most vocal bird. All of creation seemed to hold its breath at her appearance, a slender shadow with a dagger smile, crowned with devilish antlers.  
  
Thanos froze halfway through his rise from the throne he'd dragged up to the cliff edge. Instead, he fell to his knees when he beheld this vision. In her, the menace he'd cultivated in his daughters was in full fledge. Her crown pierced the sky until it seemed the clouds should writhe in torment. Her eyes dismissed everything they regarded as beneath her. Her teeth bit out a smile with the same razor's edge his beloved Gamorra had perfected. Her entire form was swathed in the black of a night without the relief of a guiding star. Thanos was infatuated at the awful sight.  
  
“My queen,” he croaked, reverently and wishfully both.  
  
“I am.” She put two fingers beneath his chin and raised them until his head hung from the hook, sharp nails pricking his throat where it flowed into his lower jaw. “You have just robbed me of half my future subjects, you upstart Titan. Half the universe's souls will now never pass the gates into my kingdom.”  
  
“I regret to have caused you any upset, your majesty.  I only wished to save the galaxy from overpopulation, as I could not save my own people.” He croaked when her fingertips pressed into his windpipe, hard. “What tribute may I give you in return?”  
  
“You have upset me. You have played with forces not yours to wield, little boy. I didn't mind you cutting short the pitiful lives of mortals when you did it properly, but now...” she considered him. “Now I must make sure you pay me what I'm owed.”  
  
“Anything,” he said, half-dazed, unsure whether he meant he'd do anything for her or anything for her not to undo his sacrifice to the universe's survival.  
  
She raised an eyebrow and smirked down at him as his vision faded to black. “Yes, that will do.”

 

**Chapter 1**

The warrior awoke unharmed, which was strange. A slender hand rubbed over a neck, now unbroken, before running through tangled black hair. He lay in an awkward sprawl on a glass floor, though it poked at neither his knees nor the elbow that pressed into it. It did not warm up beneath the palm of his hand but neither was it cool.  
  
A gasp of relief escaped his lips. He’d only narrowly escaped from death, this time. Shifting between two of his true forms may have healed his body, but he’d have to resurface from his mind soon or the vacuum of space would succeed where Thanos had failed. No time to rest. He could feel his body’s healing eating at his magic reseves.  
  
He blinked a few times in the hope to clear up the shadowy blur that showed beneath him to resolve into a clearer reflection, but it resisted. The warrior had to admit he was fading. He would have to rest.  
  
The click-clack on glass told him he was not alone. He craned his neck to the side.  
  
He gasped at the familiar sight of black of black leather boots with high heels and thin shins. He snapped his head up, for a moment sure it was a nightmare. Death had come to plague him another night. But he was not greeted by the face of his sister. The terror faded, leaving his mind clear.  
  
The warrior beheld a sight he had seen in the mirror a long time ago. Slender legs in black leggings led up to a green linen wrap. Its flowing sleeves half-hid the hands. That way, they case charms without hindering movement. Its plunge showed off skin still tanned by a long-ago Alfheim summer, the last time he had escaped Asgard to be herself. Black hair, in shorter, wilder curls than his, framed an identical face.  
  
The witch sneered down at him with his own green eyes.  
  
The warrior rolled onto his back to rise, hands open to pull daggers from wrist holsters. He carried them visibly, here, in dreams.  
  
The witch snorted. “You have nothing to fear from me this day, little prince. Unless you prove to be a fool again.” Her comment brought the jeering of an unseen crowd from all around them into focus. Most words dissolved into a hateful rumble, but the ones that played most loudly in his head could be heard distincly here. “Monster” and “traitor” this time, but they echoed the “fool” gleefully. Charming. Good to be reminded of what he hated most about himself.  
  
He glanced down at the mirror floor. Her reflection was clearer than his. “Time to switch, then?” he asked.  
  
She shook her head. “Not yet.”  
  
He frowned at her, crossing his arms against a chill he did not feel. He was, somewhere out there, floating in the vacuum of space, after all. “Time is of the essence if we wish to live.”  
  
“First we must pay the price of you diving down here to escape Him,” she chided him. “We must shed all illusion and face ourselves.” She used the same put-upon tone as Frigga when she had to repeat a lesson. He swallowed thickly. That well of grief was only to be expected. She was Frigga’s daughter after all. She smiled at him bitterly when she saw her verbal stab land.  
  
He squeezed his eyes closed and followed the echo of her tread into the darkness that had long lingered at the centre of him. The embodiment of his element, he’d always thought. The veiled chaos that could turn into destruction so  and he its willing tool. The one prophesied to bring about the end of his world. Asgard, he’d thought once, then Jotunheim  
  
Well… that was not wrong. The dome of dark mist had disguised the destruction of his own world. The bolster around a rotten chestnut.  
  
“Must we?” he asked as he always did. He was a coward and that, too, must out. “I think I know myself quite well by now.”  
  
All the times he’d come down here to escape the Other’s torture, to survive, after his fall. All parts of him at war with each other.  
  
The days he’d lingered here while his body lay abandoned on Darkalfheim, all but dead.  
  
“A sorcerer that seeks to centre themselves cannot choose the shape of his heart, mind or soul, and all must be faced,” she answered as she always did. Here, she didn’t just quote their mother but copied her voice. Oh. He clawed at his chest, closing his eyes. No need for more than a handful of words in that melody to rend his heart in little strips. And yes, there, glittering in the gloom, tears in her angry eyes, same as in his, when she looked over her shoulder.  
  
She entered the black fog. He followed, dread splashing heavily in his boots, sucking on his heels.  
  
His hands itched to grasp the pommels of his daggers. But there was no time to fight.  
  
Within, demon-red eyes glared at him. He snarled “monster!” instinctively, in time with the cry chanted by the crowd, penetrating to the core of his being. Unlike previous encounters, the rangy, dark-blue predator didn’t cringe. Instead, it rose to confront the warrior nose to nose.  
  
“I am not a monster, Odinson,” snarled the Jotunn, one forearm growing a crooked spike of frost, coming to a point at exactly the same distance from his elbow that one of the warrior’s daggers would. The similarity did not escape him. It stopped him from attacking as he had before, unable to stop himself in the face of his self-hatred.  
  
They eyed each other, Asgardian and Jotunn, poised to attack at the least provocation.  
  
Instead of inflicting more wounds, this time, he considered the ones that already scored the Jotunn’s entire body. The myriad cuts on his limbs and torso looked, at worst, half-healed, none bleeding or inflamed. The witch put a hand on the Jotunn’s shoulder and  let her seidr flow over it, closing the freshest. Four parallel cuts. The warrior remembered a week before, when he had scratched himself open there, after the Bifrost blasting his species apart had come back to haunt him, dreaming of a realm lost, lost, lost to fire.  
  
Fading bruises ringed his neck where Thanos had squeezed him until his neck had cracked. The warrior touched his own neck.  
  
This was him, they were one. He released a shuddering breath and with it the worst of his aggression.  
  
Red eyes had calmed to a watchman’s flame when he finally met them again. He had fought his soul so many times, hating the very sight of his true self. Only now could he ask, “Who are you?”  
  
The question seemed heavier this time, asked freely rather than a demand for an answer, sneered while he kneeled on top of the Jotunn with a dagger to his throat.  
  
The Jotunn smiled with a carnivore’s teeth. “I am Loki Laufeybarn, child of warmongers, God of Chaos and my brother’s keeper.” His words shook the unseen floor and the very air with their weight. The crowd failed in its jeering for a moment’s peace before they started up again. A proud declaration now, not a stolen treasure and more complete because of it.  
  
The warrior felt his shoulders loosen and swallowed down a chuckle at the Jotunn’s last words. Yes, he remembered now, he could love as well as hate. “Well, he does need all possible help.” He stepped forward and, for the first time since his soul had been revealed, stepped forward to complete the circle made up of his three faces. He wondered, looking between them, if perhaps he could finally gain an answer to a question long hidden beneath his tongue. “Are you male or female?” he asked his Jotunn soul, since the ice giant rather lacked in clues when he tried to determine the answer with a look.  
  
The Jotunn snorted. “That would be boring.”  
  
The warrior sighed, then nodded. The question was a truth as well as the lack of answer. Even now, a thousand years of living in an orderly society pressed down on him, demanding he explain themselves. It set up a ring of dissonance that let itself be heard in exclamations from the crowd that clashed in protest against each other and filled the place with dissatisfied rumbling. He looked down to check the passing of his reflection. It was nearly gone. Almost time, then.  
  
“I believe the price has been paid for our retreat here. The truth has been confronted. Now I have a universe to save,” said the witch.  
  
“Don’t forget our brother,” added the warrior.  
  
“Or to make Thanos pay,” the Jotunn spat.  
  
The witch kissed her warrior mind and her Jotunn soul on the cheek. The Jotunn squeezed her hand in thanks for her healing. The warrior handed her his daggers. “Take these, my heart,” he whispered, his tenor mellowed out from the bitten-off words he’d spoken when he had come in. They had made peace with themselves this day and they were the better for it.  
  
“I will, Loki Odinson, prince of Asgard.” She accepted them with a respectful bow, weapons clasped to her chest before strapping them to her arms.  
  
“Fare thee well, Loki Friggasdottir,” said the warrior.  
  
When the third part of herself spoke their name, she felt the pull up and out, back to a body already deteriorating after their shapeshift had first healed it.  
  
With a thought, she cast out her magic for the Bifrost trail. She had seen Heimdall cast the green abomination back to Midgard to warn their realm of Thanos. The trail’s end fluttered only yards from her body. A short pull and she was able to skywalk the new-forged branch of the Yggdrasil.  
  
She hoped she wasn’t too late to save those Norn-bedamned heroes from themselves.


	2. Save Our Souls

_2\. All sentient beings have an equal right to exist and flourish. A sentient being's life has priority over its agency. The sentient being, in exercising this right, may not injure another sentient being or through inaction allow them to come to harm._

\- Stark's seven laws for sentient beings, penned by Anthony Edward Stark, age 9 7/12

 

**Chapter 2  
**

Having a different communicator in each ear was giving Pepper a headache. The discordant sirens of the first responder vehicles didn't help. Nor did the pall that the continued absence of Tony had thrown over her mind. The worry was a gravity well in her bowels, heavy and drawing everything downward.  
  
“I've been unable to reach Ms Akakios, Missus,” FRIDAY reported, with the despondent monotone she'd had since losing touch with Tony as he left the atmosphere.  
  
“Any news?” on Tony, she didn't need to add. Pepper was going to hogtie that man with steel cuffs to their bed.  
  
“No sign of his transponder on planet or in sublunar orbit, ma'am. No indication of any intelligence agency scrambling to make covert contact in any desert or water mass. No report of a person of his description in any media or communication channel I can access... There's a miniscule chance he's in China.”  
  
The last item on FRIDAY's list, a foreshortened version of previous reports, brought Pepper up short. “China?” Pepper asked as she picked her way across torn-up grass and between hastily erected triage tents. The chatter in the communicator from the Department of Damage Control was indicated the start of a hullabaloo on the other end of the camp. The media had arrived.  
  
“They've updated their security again, Missus, I have a few blindspots in the east of the country. It seems they've reverse-engineered parts of the security software we sold to the Department of Defense last month. I have not had time to decrypt it.”  
  
“Let's not count on that, FRIDAY.”  She sighed as she smiled tight-lipped at knot of volunteer counselors taking a break. They were here to help bystanders talk through what they saw during the most recent invasion. “Keep trying. Report back in fifteen minutes.” It had been every half hour. Pepper was losing her patience.  
  
“Will do, Missus.” FRIDAY said and closed their line. Pepper massaged her temples, relieved to be down to one communicator again. She approached the tumult caused by professional rubberneckers about to cross the yellow line.  
  
She really wished Kala could have been here to coordinate the volunteers from the Department of Damage Control and whomever they could miss from Stark Industries. She had such a gift for seeing where a pair of hands might be put to good use. Anyone who needed help had been transported to Washington Square Park, or found their way there from the surrounding streets. The police had been good at checking who did and did not need to be there.  
  
With her cool head, Kala Akakios had been a godsend for the Department of Damage Control when Tony'd transferred her there from the Maria Stark Foundation. Super-powered creatures – and the damage they wrought - only seemed to increase with the years. With a ready army of volunteers who could take paid leave from Stark Industries in most major cities, it balanced out any potential bad PR Iron Man might cause by being at ground zero of any given disaster. As much as they wanted to divorce the two, Tony was too much the face of both, especially on the East Coast of the continental US. The living embodiment of harnessing technology and using it as a force for good.  
  
Kala had stepped up to lead their crisis intervention branch. Pepper had been glad to leave one of her too-many jobs in competent hands. It left her a little more time, especially when their work had exploded in the wake of Ultron. She could focus on the walking disaster zone that was Tony grieving over the death of his child and caretaker.  
  
Pepper considered the clamoring crowd from the shade of a white tent. Kala, with her almond eyes and patient smiles was so much more well-suited for calming the press. Pepper herself had become too much a corporate creature to be trusted on her word anymore.  
  
For a moment Pepper wished her friend was there just for her sake. Her calm voice and strong arms had been a haven when Pepper had fallen apart, fresh off being a walking volcano. Oh, the choking seduction of such destructive power welling up inside of her. She had felt a goddess, standing over Tony, whose awed worship had drawn her back from the brink. She had needed Kala to be the counterbalance to Tony's erratic pendulum.  
  
A comforting embrace, too, when she’d broken up with Tony. She couldn't be there for him when he was paranoid and she was burnt out. A voice of reason when Pepper choked at the guilt of leaving Tony on his own while he was abandoned by the majority of his team. A phone call away the night Rhodey was laid up and Tony was called out again and Pepper the lone watchman left to wait for relief.  
  
Pepper closed her eyes and told herself to stop fantasising. There was work to be done.  
  
“Ms Potts,” a detective exclaimed in relief when she turned away from a gaggle of press to see Pepper approach. “I've got a few... representatives... here insisting to interview people on the scene. Could you...? It'd  free up some of my people.” She waved a hand at the blue line that had stepped up to reinforce the ribbon of yellow bending under the rising tide.  
  
“Of course.”  Intimidate and redirect, right up her alley. Since the park was one of her and Tony's usual haunts, she knew just where to take them. She led the way to Hangman’s Elm, in a corner of the park.  
  
She stepped into the trees shelter, everyone circling around her. Her ponytail was a mess and her clothes damp with sweat after the long day on their feet they'd had. She was glad to be wearing sneakers. Hands on her hips, she held still until everyone had settled and there was a pause in the flashing of the cameras. Half of them only had a camera phone pointed at her, bless them. Whatever else came from this impromptu press conference, at least she'd provided a suitable distraction.  
  
She took a deep breath, froze a few seconds so FRIDAY could quietly report, “No change, Missus,”  and schooled her face into a friendly smile. She resisted the urge to touch her ear and demand more details. “The Department of Damage Control,”  she began, projecting her voice, “is working to provide extra manpower and resources to aid the professionals on the scene both in helping out the victims of the latest alien attack on New York and in the clean-up to ensure it will not hinder any investigation.  
  
“Communication channels will, as always, remain open between the Department, the Avengers Initiative and emergency services to provide people with the help they need as quickly as possible. While the aliens have left New York, we've all seen that they have attacked at several points around the globe. They still present a clear and present danger, so we ask that you remain patient and alert as we seek to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. If any vigilantes wish to aid in the current situation, please know that with the present threat the requirement of having signed of the Sokovia Accords has been temporarily suspended. Please contact the Avengers Compound for immediate debriefing and dispatch.”  
  
“Anyone wishing to contribute time, information or other support should contact the Department at 1-888-Good-Guy or -”  
  
Then a reverse rain of ashes flew heavenward on a non-existent breeze.  
  
The screaming started.  
  
Pepper comes back to herself with FRIDAY’s voice urgent in her ear. “…breathe, Missus, oh, please breathe. Your life-signs have not disappeared. You must breathe. Humans need oxygen. I need you to get Boss back. Oh, please breathe.” She choked out several desperate gasps before bending over with pain in her chest.  
  
“What?” she chokes out. She plunks down on her backside.  
  
Tony was right, circles through her hysterical mind. Tony was right. Never in all the nights that she talked him down from his nightmares, when she retrieved him from the pit of panicked engineering he’d dug himself into… never had she thought he’d be right. “You were dead, all dead,” he rambles in her mind as she gazes at the crowd, half of what it was. Some are thumbing at their phones. Some are gazing into bushes as if their friends or colleagues are hiding. Some are sitting, standing, like her. Silent and screaming. There’s so much screaming.  
  
The chatter on her other communicator’s incoherent and drowning out FRIDAY. She tosses it away.  
  
Her mind cannot comprehend the sight before her. The horror of what the last few seconds mean. Half of the people just… dissolved.  
  
No. No. She’d never thought they would lose. She’d thought she was indulging Tony, when he showed her every desperate measure he was taking, telling her she was his back-up, if he died, when he died.  
  
Yet here she was, living Tony’s nightmare without Tony to spit in the face of fate.  
  
So she closed her eyes, allowed herself ten messy, messy breaths that rasped through an aching throat. Tendrils come loose from her ponytail stroked her wet cheeks, in lieu of his fingers.  
  
Her mind’s eye built a sketch from Tony’s whispers, a silhouette of a giant on a floating throne amid a hundred ships. Another alien would-be-king too fond of medieval trappings, he’d told her when he tried to joke about what kept him awake. She fixed the image in her mind and let fire fill her breast, caught the air in her fists and flared her nostrils. She let rage build her back up so she could stand beneath the grey-speckled sky.  
  
Once on her feet, she bared her teeth at her mind’s image and let fly the saliva that had built up around her clenched teeth. She promised herself she’d spit in the face of her actual enemy before the day was out. She panted. With fire fueling her body she couldn’t sit back scared and wait for Tony.  
  
Her eyes tried to focus on the air in front of her, on the specks floating by. She was breathing people. A screech rattled in her breast, wishing to resolve into sobs and - no. She imagined heating the air in her lungs, purifying it. Imagined Tony’s eyes as he’d looked at her, all at once a scientist gazing upon a discovery, a warrior realising the battle wasn’t lost and an unhappy child hoping heroes did exist. Nothing had ever felt as empowering as that look of his, especially when she realised he sometimes still looked at her like that when he thought she wouldn’t notice.  
  
She cherished the memory of his hopeful eyes for the space of a breath before she let it go. Greenwich Village rushed back in, refugees rushing about in clots, like blood from a re-opened wound. Wails from human throats rather than ambulances and police cars. The deeper boom from crashes as things collapsed.  
  
And then, as a promise of salvation, a vertical rainbow glittered for only a second, touching the earth a few blocks away. Pepper blinked, the afterimage burnt into her retinas.  
  
“Missus,” said FRIDAY, “Colonel Rhodes on the line.”  
  
She gasped in happiness and started to walk towards. That must have been Thor and with some luck, the rest of the Avengers. “Put me through.” A beep and then, “Jim-” she gasps, suddenly unsure how to continue.  
  
“Pepper. I'm sorry, but-”  
  
“-half of humanity just dissolved. Yeah.” She released a shuddering breath. “I… I have to go to the compound. Initiate the emergency protocols Tony prepared.”  
  
“Did he really...? Of course he did, mad bastard had a god complex.” Rhodey cursed the comm line blue before a deep breath rustled across the connection. “Pepper, I got nothing. We... we lost.” His voice broke. “Viz... Vision is dead and we lost so many. We gave our all, Pepper, and it wasn't enough. He got the stones, snapped his fingers and made his wish. Oh God save all those poor souls. Thanos got his wish.”  
  
Pepper choked on a sob, hid her tears behind loosened strands of hair and a trembling hand. “Yeah. So... I'm going to collect Tony's toys and... and... we'll see what we can save. Meet at the compound?”  
  
“Meet you there.”  He snapped the connection closed without signing off.  
  
Pepper made her way out of the park, where people had clutched each other and were trying to talk to God or their loved ones, without effect either way.  
  
“Initiate Rapture, FRIDAY,” she told the AI who held their channel open, now.  
  
“Please state your personal password, Missus,” FRIDAY said in the cool voice she'd adopted from Pepper herself.  
  
“Order 66 was successful. All the Jedi are dead.”  
  
“Password accepted. Please make your way to the Stark Lair, located in the sub-basement of the Avengers Compound,” FRIDAY responded in a monotone. Then, in her regular musical tones “Please make your way to the intersection, Missus, the helicopter will be there in five minutes.”  
  
Pepper walked around the people, some comforting each other, some catatonic, some screaming. Everyone seemed to have the same sense of surreality as her. Only Tony's clear instructions, given when she'd thought she was only indulging his paranoia, now propelled her along a clearer course than the rest of the crowd.  
  
Once the helicopter hovered over her she secured the harness around her legs and waist and let herself be winched inside. It took off before she even sat down.  
  
“Rapture, phase one,” FRIDAY announced, back to the monotone. “Please specify scenario: foothold situation, end of civilisation, end of humanity, imminent planet death or other.”  
  
Her fingers numb to the thighs they'd started to rub in an effort to comfort herself, Pepper stared sightlessly out of the pilot's chair as the heliopter steered itself. “End – end of civilisation.”  
  
“Voice print accepted. Please put your hand on any screen, Missus.”  She did. “Hand print accepted. Broad scenario accepted. Narrowing down specifics according to iincoming data. Briefing will be prepared. All surviving current and former Avengers are en route to the compound. Initialising procedures for information preservation. Initialising procedures to preserve samples of civilisation. Initialising mapping of salvagable centres of civilisation and projected scenarios for Accords signatories. Launching auxiliary satellites to maintain communication network. Starting mass production of drones for distribution of food and medicine. Buying recommended amount of non-perishable food and medicines..” The steady roll of measures she was taking drifted past Pepper, who felt too numb to really take it in.  
  
She just wanted Tony back.

 


End file.
